"I forgot to turn the gas off when we left for vacation, and I didn't forget to turn the gas off when we left for vacation."

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psychological contradiction

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we are bursting with them

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especially the kind that Socrates points out

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Walt Whitman

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"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."

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Socrates is unlike Whitman in that he looks to resolve contradictions

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Plato thinks more along the lines of Whitman: part of me wants one thing, and part of me wants something else

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Walt Whitman and his "contains multitudes" is just footnotes to Plato

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that is the point of the dialogue form

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contain contradictions by containing many people who disagree on a topic

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Plato is doing an experiment

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What happens when pure logical, this Socratic stuff when it crashes down on messy, "psychologic" or "anthropologic", i.e. the human mind, the fact that we humans are a kind of ape, conscious apes, but apes

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the divided line

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visible realm (opinion)

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eikasia [εἰκασία]

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imagination

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a human way of dealing with appearances

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inability to perceive whether a perception is an image of something else

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pistis [πίστις]

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persuasive discourse that was elliptical and concentrated on the affect and effect rather than on the representation of the truth

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intellectual realm (knowledge)

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dianoia [διάνοια]

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a type of thinking, specifically about mathematical and technical subjects

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the capacity for, process of, or result of discursive thinking, in contrast with the immediate apprehension that is characteristic of noesis

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neosis [noēsis]

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intellect or intelligence

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as a verb: intellection

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the modern concept intuition

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understanding, mind, thought, reason

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intellectual perception, as in "the mind's eye"

Ideas and Concepts:

On contradictions, via tonight's Dialogues of Plato class: "A contradiction is a statement that states both p and not p, e.g. 'I am six feet tall and I am not six feet tall.' In other words, a contradiction is nothing, the universe doesn't allow them. But that is the logical meaning. Psychologically, we are bursting with contradictions. We all have contradictory beliefs, especially about the stuff Socrates asks about. No wonder he makes everyone look like an idiot."